Bang!
by el sombrerero
Summary: He was there, his smile, his laughter, his annoyingly bright suit; the Joker was back.    How real was he? Batman could never know, but he knew one thing, he wouldn't leave without him granting the clown his final wish. He wanted to go out with a bang


He could still hear that cackle puncturing his eardrums, all he needed to do was to conceal himself in the darkness of the cave and sit still for a minute or so... then he would hear it, that incessant cackle that still echoed in every building of the city. It was everywhere, yet nowhere to be found. It was still alive, yet the owner's body was six feet underneath the masked man... completely gone.

And then there were those endless nights at the city, completely and utterly alone, which made him realize that working by himself wasn't exactly his favorite part of his life. They were family to him and now they were gone. Tim had vanished into his own mind, sheltering from the memories of those nights with him, and Barbara... she had a purpose to continue, to maintain herself in the light of sanity, but it was nothing like before, nothing remotely alike.

Those were the nights in which he questioned his own lucidity, the nights in which he heard the cackle resound more profoundly in the dark alleys of the city; the nights in which he knew he was alone; he was left by himself, to patrol a city that remained relatively peaceful after that man had left for good, and the silence and loneliness did nothing to ease him.

He worked better when he had something to do. He worked better when there was something or someone to catch, but, since the laughing man's death, the streets were as peaceful as they've never been, and that made more space for the resounding laughter inside the caped crusader's head.

Nothing had ever made him question his own sanity before, not to the point of losing himself and quitting. Even after Robin he could still handle it, but him, with that never ending laughter and how he knew that the owner had died long ago... it was another different story.

He, the laughing man, had accomplished what he wanted; he had found the masked man's breaking point. And that night was the one in which he realized that he had reached a limit, in which his own sanity was at stake.

He first heard it as he always did, muffled by the other thoughts in the back of his head, yet, when he heard it echo in the proximity of a nearby building, he knew this wasn't anything like before. At first, he refused to follow it, that nerve wrecking laughter; he struggled to tell himself that it was all within him, but it kept going, and going, and not even the soft cries of the city's night crawlers could make it vanish.

The building was empty, of course, nothing but rats and a few cats. Whatever he had been following had vanished as soon as he entered the abandoned place. Yet, a quiet echo remained in the back of his head, and he felt something watching cautiously, hidden by the safety of the darkness.

Gradually, after minutes passed by, he realized that there was no use in remaining there; the laughter was no longer as vibrant as I had once heard it, but as soon as he turned around towards the exit, it came again. This time upsetting the chaotic order in which the rats lived in, for they soon started running in all directions, trying to get out.

He had to know, of course he did; he had to go further into that forsaken rabbit hole, ponder a bit more about the whereabouts of that laughter, its origin. So he went further up into the abandoned apartment complex, stopping at every single floor in order to analyze the frequency of the cackles.

Until he found it, the origin, the single room in which the laughter was so vibrant and deafening. And alongside with its origin, he found the creator of such tormenting laughter. A tape recorder was placed carelessly on the floor, wired to some small speakers that held enough capacity for the laughter to be heard for a couple of blocks from there.

He expected an ambush, some crime lords wailing at him for breaking his one rule, wanting to put an end to their fear, yet he didn't get anything, nothing but a door being closed, and then silence... the laughter ended abruptly, and again he was left alone with his thoughts and the echo of the cackle.

There was nothing peculiar to be seen there, nothing that struck him as dangerous, yet the feeling of being watch was still there, and it refused to leave him. A worn-down couch decorated the rat hole, alongside with a single chair and some ripped curtains covering the lonesome window. And as much as he tried to find something out of place, something to pinpoint and then attack, nothing came, so he headed towards the door, wanting to leave this whole nonsense behind before curiosity could kill the cat.

Granted, as soon as his fingers enclosed the doorknob, the cackles were heard again, this time not as melodic as the ones on the tape recorder, not as distorted by the background sound. This time, the cackle was right behind him.

And there was no exist, no way out whatsoever, trapped in an enclosed space, pitch dark and ultimately alone; you can't count an insane person as wholly there, after all.

The intensity of the darkness did nothing to ease his nerves; that crawling sensation on his spine delayed every feeling of ease that could have come to his troubled mind. It was impossible to conceal any calm in there, nothing to ease the interior workings that consisted of logical thinking and pure moral codes.

Thoughts ran inside his head, trying to figure out different things at the same time, which was proving to be a difficult task, for the main thought in the back of his head was to decipher who was the silhouette before him and what was it thinking, what was it planning. The cackle was still there, of course, yet it was reduced to faint giggles of pure glee and excitement, and the silhouette wouldn't move more than necessary, only enough to make it obvious that it was slipping down to the floor, with its back pressed against the wall.

Then the laughter ceded, and everything was quiet again.

"I'm glad that you could make it." The slick, oily voice lingered longer than expected, bringing unwanted memories to the masked man. "I was slightly preoccupied that you wouldn't hear my invitation from that far away." A streak of light remained for a while on the silhouette's hands, making it fairly visible that they moved quite erratically, following the silhouette's words.

"Show yourself." His voice came out as a grunt, a hoarse, gutural grunt, yet, the last note that his voice gave faltered, giving away the true state of shock that the masked man was in.

"Well, you see, that'd be waaay too easy for us, wouldn't it? Besides," the voice left the silence linger more than it should have before continuing, "you outta know me better than anyone, dark room or not."

He knew it, of course; the masked man knew perfectly well to whom that voice belonged to, after all, he had been hearing over and over that oily, slick, sickening laughter for the past year. And now it was back, yet he refused to believe so, to admit to himself that the laughing man had escaped from the grips of death. "You're dead."

"Aha! So, you are openly admitting that you've became a nutcase, like me!" Joy emanated from the silhouette's discovery, as if it had won some game that it only knew about. "I knew it, batsy, one of these days, I knew you were gonna lose it." The joy didn't last for that long, tho, and, as soon as it dissipated, the room turned darker than it already was, and then the silhouette's voice changed, as if whatever he had won no longer mattered, for there was already another thing at stakes there. "I knew I'd find your breaking point." Satisfaction dripped from every single word that left its mouth and a much somber tone lingered in the air. "The question is, how long would it take for you to fully break? It's been a year, bats, a whole year and you're nowhere done with me."

There was nothing he could do to ease his mind; the silhouette was right, yet, he wasn't sure it was there at all. It had been a year of not seeing him, of him being gone, six feet underneath the asylum, but the mocking laughter kept following him through the days, and now he wasn't sure that his sanity was still as intact as he thought it was. What if this wasn't real? Would that break him? And even if it did break him, would the laughing man be there to witness everything? Or would it be all a simple illusion, and he was breaking himself with no help whatsoever? And what if this was real? What if the man with the permanent smile was right before him, back from the dead?

"You're not real." Nothing else came out of him, nothing but a useless whimper that he tried to suppress with his heavy breathing. "You can't be real."

"That won't make me disappear, Batsey; it's not that easy." The silhouette stood up, carefully walking towards the window and tearing away the drapes that prevented any light to come into the room. There was a limp in his walk, but, aside form that, nothing had changed in him. The same smile that had haunted his dreams was still plastered in his face, still mocking, still terrifying; his skin was still pale, his lips cherry red, his clothes were still the same. Nothing had changed in him, it was as if time had passed him by, and so the man who laughed remained static, despite what happened, despite the year that had passed away. He was still the same.

There was nothing left to do; the caped crusader looked hastily at the man with the everlasting smile and hoped for him to disappear, but nothing happened, and the smiling man's cackle made it quite evident that he had noticed the crusader's attempt at vanishing that mocking smile once and for all.

"You know it just doesn't work that way, bats."

And he could only size him up, look of answers, for a glimpse that could tell him that this was but a dream and that the smiling man in front of him was still six feet underneath the asylum. He just wanted to know what crossed the smiling man's mind; yet, he had forgotten that the other man never had one visible glimpse of rational thinking that could possible muster on that external image of his. He was hard to decipher and easy to misunderstand, so there was no use in anticipating any actions, because he was, after all, unpredictable and instinctual.

"You can't be real. We bur...ried you. Tim, he, he killed you. Barbara saw it, Gordon saw it. You can't be real." The crusader was already losing his mind, reaching that breaking point, mustering nothing but pure confusion and frustration, for there was nothing that he could do about what he thought to be an illusion. How real was he? The Batman didn't know, but his laughter was there, perfectly audible, perfectly real. Whatever had the clown done for this to happen was not what concerned him, though; what troubled him the most was the sole thought of what could he possibly do had the clown decided to have more fun before he left for good.

"Problem is, bats, Brucey... Can I call you Brucey? I will anyways." The clown approached the crusader, following him as he made his way to the exit. "You see, the problem is that I am here, that it is real, that little Timmy didn't do much more than a simple scratch on me. I am here." The crusader seized up, hearing the clown's voice was realistic enough for him to realize that this was no simple illusion. "I am real." He turned around to look at the clown from a short distance, but as soon as he did, a punch was thrown at him.

"You know, I always wanted to go out with a bang, and I sort of did... but not exactly the way I wanted it to be, Brucey." The clown approached the crusader as he tried to reincorporate himself from the floor, smiling widely as he noticed a small sign of frustration and fear on the crusader's eyes. "So, this is my last wish before I truly leave. You have the choice, bats, you and only you." He kneeled next to the crusader's limp body, smiling as he reached in for his mask, and upon noticing no struggle, he ripped it out of its owner's face. "After all, you created me; therefore you can only destroy me."

Never in his life had the crusader felt this vulnerable, this utterly useless, this weak. There was nothing he could do to appease the echoes of Tim's wails and Joker's laughter, and that rendered him impotent.

If this had been a year ago, he'd have beaten the clown to a bloody pulp, right before delivering him to Arkham, but this wasn't one year ago. The reality was that Tim was lost in his own tormented mind, Barbara was paraplegic, and he was alone, his life at the mercy of a resurrected homicidal maniac.

"The job is simple, Bruce, you break your one rule, get rid of me for good. I go out with the bang that I wanted, and I break you." It was simple, at least for him. The clown paced around the room, Batman's mask at hand, toying with it and smiling at a very confused Bruce Wayne. "So, what do you say? Let's do this for the sake of old times, huh? And, come on, Brucey, is it too much to ask for you to smile a bit?" The clown tossed the mask to the floor and it landed next to the crusader.

"You are already dead." That's all the clown got, but he planned on getting something more out of the hero.

"A little encouragement, then? Fine by me, more fun." There was a moment of silence in which the clown pondered ways to mentally torture the caped crusader, ways to taunt him, to make him do what he wanted him to do. Finally, he found it, the perfect way to make him break his one rule. "Do you want to know every single little detail of what I did to dear Tim those days? Should I start with that or should I tell you about how he cried your name out when he finally gave up?"

It was nerve wrecking, to say the least; the sole thought of Tim being strapped down to that bed, the torture, the screams, the wailing, and finally... how he gave up, and there was nothing the caped man could do to stop the images coming to his mind. And, of course, The Joker had taped part of it, yet he had saved the best for later.

"Oh, come on, Bats! There are a thousand things for you to smile. Here." The clown reached for Batman's face, forcing him to look at him in the eye, "I'll cheer you up. You see, when little Tim started to give in, to break, he began crying out your name, over and over again." The clown's eyes were cold, emotionless, yet a spark flashed inside of them. He was enjoying this. "He would tell himself that you would come for him, that you'd rescue him. He trusted you to find him on time... shame you didn't." His smile stretched further, a grimace came before the mocking did. "And... and you know what he else told me? Do, do you want to know? Haha, that poor boy, he told me, oh, listen to this, he told me that no matter what happened, nothing could ever defeat the Batman, nothing could ever break him nor what it stood for!" The laughter erupted as soon as his agitated words left his lips, granting the crusader with enough time to pull away from the clown. "Because... oh, because criminals, like me, could never prevail over what was right." And the laughter ended; a somber smile possessed the clown's face as he pulled a knife out of his back pocket. "I guess I defeated the stereotype, didn't I? I prevailed, and the boy faltered, and he broke right before my very eyes. Where is him now, bats, hm? Lost within the walls of the asylum? Lost within his own guilt, his own memories of those nights that changed us all forever?"

There it was, the anger building up inside the pit of his stomach, and then the vile rising from his throat, trying to erupt into a wail filled with anger and guilt. He knew this feeling all too well, the feeling he used to get whenever he beat down the clown to a bloody pulp, before delivering him to the asylum; yet, this time, he felt no control.

"So, how's it gonna be, bats? I want to go out with a bang, you want revenge, and here I am again, offering the perfect one-liner for a perfect punchline. I'm just waiting for your cue." He threw the knife, which landed in the middle of the room. "So, Brucey, are you ready? Just think about Tim, the rest would become easier afterward."

It went the same like before. This was one year ago. His fists connected with the clown's mocking smile, trying to quiet down all the doubts, the anger, the pain that his words had left behind. And, with every single hit, the caped crusader realized that nothing was going away; the pain was still there, the anger, the doubts... the venom had entered his veins and the only thing that he accomplished through the constant and aimless throws at the clown was to spread the poison, lessening his chances to live through this.

"You are already dead." He looked at the clown, regret, guilt, all gone, just that undying hunger for revenge. "Tim killed you." A fist flew to the clown's jaw. A wide smile appeared on the clown's face. "I buried you underneath Arkham." There came a second punch, blood flowed from the clown's nose. The laughter erupted. "Six feet under." A third blow, a crack was heard, but the laughter wouldn't stop. "You are dead." Blood splattered all over his face, yet the laughter was still there, the smile was permanent, the mocking wouldn't stop... and that anger, it wouldn't just vanish. "You are fucking dead!" And he was done. Heaving heavily, the crusader collapsed on the floor, releasing the strong grip he had on the clown, who was still laughing as he wiped away the blood that kept pouring from his nose.

"And that's it, that's it, ladies and gentlemen. You're just not gonna do it, are you, Batsy?" The laughter stopped and the clown looked genuinely disappointed. "I expected more from you. But I guess you need more encouragement. What about this?" His voice sounded muffled, nasal, due to the fractured nose he had received seconds ago. Yet, he still had enough strenght to pull out a small square box with a red button in the middle of it, contemplated it for a minute, smiling while doing so, as if he knew something nothing else could know. "I told you I was going out with a bang, and you were gonna break before me. I'm a man of my word, Bats. Either way we do it, this will happen; there's no turning back."

There was no way to know where those bombs were located, no way to reach on time and alert the Commissioner for a soon evac. There were only two ways out of this, and either way... he was going to break his one rule.

"You are already dead."

The clown snorted, looking rather amusingly at the crusader. "You've been repeating that over and over again, Brucey. Is this some sort of way to treasure yourself that you won't be killing anybody? Are you willing to admit that you might have gone bonkers in order to save your useless code? Oh, who am I kidding? Of course you are willing to." The clown's gaze adverted the quick movement the Batman made to reach for his mask, which was still laying on the floor, alongside with splatters of dried blood.

"I won't break my rule, because you are already dead." The hero reached in for the knife the clown had thrown, he ripped open the fabric of the mask, every fiber of it giving in to the pressure of the blade. "But just in case, the Batman won't do this. This is me avenging Jason, Barbara, Tim... this is Bruce Wayne taking the burden off of Batman's shoulders. What he stands for will be intact."

"Oh, Batsy! You've just taken another step into the realm of insanity! I'm so proud, all in one day. Tho, I hate to ruin your fun, but for sake's of my fun, you seem to have forgotten who Batman truly is." The clown looked maliciously at the crusader, his smile never faltering, his mocking laughter never fully gone. And, as much as the Batman hated to admit it, he was right. He was The Batman. Yet, for now, he had to be something more.

He threw the knife back to the floor, managing to slide it far enough to reach the clown's feet. He was determined, he had to continue. He had to leave all this madness behind, in the past.

The clown kneeled down, picked up the knife and looked expectantly at the bat, his smile still plastered on his face. "You know what else Tim told me that knight?" He walked towards Bruce, for the caped crusader was nowhere in sight. "He told me how you blamed yourself for everybody's deaths. Jason, Barbara... and now him... you seem to bring bad luck to those who try to help you, Brucey."

And the instincts kicked in. Bruce Wayne reached out for the clown's throat, while trying to avoid the mindless strikes the Joker threw at his way with his knife.

The Joker's back collided against the window, breaking it. His laughter echoed throughout the city and everything else went silent. Bruce breathed in and out heavily, contemplating everything, trying to figure out the difference between an hallucination and reality, yet he couldn't find a single thing that pointed towards this being a simple nightmare. His left hand held firmly the Joker's collar, his right fist raised menacingly at the Joker's face. One final blow and he knew the clown wouldn't wake up again, but he wasn't sure if that would stop the cackles or the smile.

"Cowering already, Bruce?I'll give you a little encouragement." The Joker reached in for the small box, his bonny finger pressed the red button, and a loud bang was heard, followed by a couple of minor explosions. "This is the kind of bang I wanted to go with." The building was collapsing; the bombs had been placed somewhere on the basement; there was no way out. "Now, wait, there are more." On the distance, another explosion could be heard, sirens wailed, the night was engulfed by a dark cloud that covered the moon.

And it was enough. The Joker's smile stretched widely as soon as he saw the Bruce's face, struggling to control the fight within himself. Bruce Wayne was losing a battle that he never had a chance to win. "Tick-tock, Brucey, the building is collapsing and unless you want to go down with me, too, I suggest you to do something. By the way, I think you still have time to reach Gordon and his boy before they light up the sky."

A final blow reached the Joker's face, his smile faltered for a bit, until he realized what was happening. He was going to break the Batman. Bruce Wayne had given up.

Pushing the Joker's body further through the window's frame, Bruce reached in for the back of his belt, pulling out a batarang. "This is your cue." He stabbed the clown with it, burying one of its blades deep into his left arm. "And here comes the punchline." With whatever force he had left, Bruce pushed the Joker out of the window, down to the pavement, to the imminent fall. "And there goes the bang."

He didn't stay long enough to see the clown's wide smile before the explosion occurred. He didn't stay long enough to hear the cackles, to see the spark inside the clown's eyes. Bruce Wayne, the Batman, had broken his one rule... and thus everything he stood for had vanished. The Joker had won. This was what he had wanted all along; he went out with a bang.


End file.
